Huckleberry Finished (19 page)

“He won't hear it from me, Captain. I give you my word.”

Williams nodded. “Good luck to you, then.” He paused. “You may need it.”

For some reason I felt like a nice, juicy little lamb about to enter the lion's den.

I
didn't have any trouble finding the door Captain Williams had described to me. No one tried to stop me, either. The crew seemed to have gotten more lax in carrying out their duties since we'd been stuck here. I think everybody was upset about it.

I felt sorry for the captain, too. He paled into insignificance when Charles Gallister came aboard. Not only that, but even though he didn't know it yet, things were about to get even worse for him once the state attorney general launched that crooked gambling probe Vince Mallory had mentioned to Mark and me in the casino. I didn't think for a second that Williams had anything to do with the criminal operation or even knew about it, but that wouldn't prevent him from being disgraced along with all the other people involved in running the boat.

Mark and I ought to just back off and let Vince and the other investigators from the AG's office go about their business, I told myself. They would solve Ben Webster's murder, and once they started bringing out the rest of the dirty laundry involving the
Southern Belle
, there was a good chance they would solve Hannah's murder, too, and nail Charles Gallister for it even though he might not be any more involved with the crooked gambling than Captain Williams was.

But somehow that just didn't feel right. Hannah's death was a very personal killing. Bad enough that someone had hit her like that. Then they had laid their hands on her, carried her to the railing, and pitched her off into the river where the paddlewheel would mangle her body. It took a special sort of monster to do something like that—and a monster to arrange it, too, because I still believed that Gallister wouldn't have dirtied his own hands by carrying out the murder. The people who had been hurt the most, other than Hannah herself, of course, ought to be the ones who brought him to justice, not some investigators paid by the state who had never even known Hannah.

Of course,
I
hadn't known Hannah, I reminded myself, but I knew Louise and Eddie. Mark and I were acting on their behalf in trying to trap Gallister. We weren't working for the state, or even for society at large.

Murder was personal. Justice should be, too.

With that thought in mind, I opened the door, stepped into the anteroom, and knocked on the door of Charles Gallister's private suite.

There was no response, so after a minute I knocked again, harder this time. A few more seconds went by, and then Gallister himself jerked the door open and demanded, “What is it?”

He had taken off the jacket of the ridiculously expensive suit but still wore the vest. He'd loosened his tie as well, and in his left hand he held a short, squat glass made of thick crystal with a couple of inches of amber liquid in it. Gallister's flushed face told me that drink wasn't the first one he'd had recently.

As soon as he saw me, the irritation vanished from his features and was replaced by a smile. “Well, well,” he went on. “Exactly what I like to see when I open my door: a beautiful woman.”

I had a feeling that he would have said the same thing to just about any female between the ages of eighteen and sixty. Maybe a year or two either side of that. I smiled back at him as if I enjoyed hearing it, even though, smug, would-be Lotharios like Gallister annoyed the heck out of me, like they did for most women.

“Have we met, my dear?” he asked.

That
was a good way to endear yourself to somebody, I thought—openly acknowledge that you couldn't even remember if you'd met the person before. But I just said, “Not exactly. My name is Delilah Dickinson.”

“A lovely, lovely name.” He made a sweeping motion with the glass in his hand. “Won't you come in?”

I stepped into the suite's sitting room, getting that old lion's den feeling again as I did so. As Gallister firmly closed the door behind me, he continued, “What can I do for you, Delilah?”

He didn't even ask if he could call me by my given name, I noticed. Again, I didn't allow my expression or my voice to reveal that that bothered me. Instead I said, “I run Dickinson Literary Tours. I have a group here on the boat.”

“Of course. I remember seeing you on deck earlier. I was going to ask Captain Williams to tell me your name, but then I got distracted with this terrible business about the murder and all. Still, I shouldn't allow anything to distract me from finding out more about a beautiful woman.”

He had a twinkle in his eye as he said it. Obviously, he planned to keep hitting that “beautiful woman” note. I didn't know if he was doing it because he actually found me attractive, or because it was just habit with him. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

“What brings you here to my suite?” he asked. I was glad he didn't want to know how I'd found out where it was. That way I didn't have to lie
or
get Captain Williams into trouble.

“I just wanted to thank you for your efforts to get the police to release the riverboat. A lot of my clients would like to get back home or get on with the rest of their vacations.”

Gallister grimaced and shrugged. “I appreciate the sentiment, my dear, but I haven't done much good in that respect so far. That police detective is one stubborn…I mean, Detective Travis is being adamant that she doesn't want the
Southern Belle
to leave Hannibal until she's had a chance to investigate the murder more fully. My attorneys have run into some unexpected roadblocks in circumventing that order. But I'm confident that they'll be successful before too much longer. Can I offer you a drink?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Come on,” he urged with a grin. “The sun's over the yardarm. And I have some excellent Kentucky bourbon.”

I didn't tell him that the same thought about the yardarm had crossed my mind earlier in the day. I said, “No, I really can't. I had another reason for stoppin' by, though.”

He sipped his whiskey, then asked, “And what might that be?”

“I want to invite you to come down to the salon at eight tonight for a special performance.” I remembered that Gallister was supposed to be a Mark Twain buff, although I was convinced that his main reason for owning this riverboat was so he'd have someplace he could shack up with his girlfriends from time to time. “Mr. Mark Twain himself will be there.”

Gallister grinned. “Old Sam Clemens, eh? You're a fan of Twain's work?”

“Of course I am. Would I be leading a tour group on this cruise otherwise?”

Actually, whether I was a fan of a particular writer didn't matter one way or the other. A tour might be profitable regardless of my opinion of the author's work. I was more interested in the bottom line, although I do have a liking for most Southern literature.

“So you'll be there?” Gallister asked.

“With bells on,” I said.

“I like that image,” he said. As he smiled at me, I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was picturing me with bells on—and not much else.

I hurried on, “So you'll be there?”

“Definitely,” he said. “Assuming that that bulldog of a police-woman will allow us into the salon by then.”

I hadn't thought about that. Detective Travis had closed the salon for the day, but surely by now she was getting close to being finished with the interviews she was conducting with the passengers and crew. If the salon remained off limits, Mark wouldn't be able to put on his performance after all.

Of course, he didn't have to in order for us to proceed with our plan. The special material he planned to include in the show was meant to soften up Gallister, that's all. We could go ahead without it.

“Don't worry, I'll speak to the detective again,” Gallister went on. “Now that I know you'll be in attendance tonight, I won't allow anything to interfere with the show.”

“That's mighty kind of you,” I told him.

“It's the least I can do.” He frowned in thought. “Let me see…. That young man who was killed, he was a member of your tour group, wasn't he?”

“That's right. Ben Webster.” I paused. “You didn't happen to know him, did you?”

“Me?” Gallister looked and sounded genuinely surprised. “Why would I know him?”

“Oh, no reason. But surely, people you're acquainted with come on this boat from time to time.”

“Certainly. I recommend it to all my friends and business acquaintances.” He chuckled. “I've let some potential customers in real estate deals take the cruise for free. One of the perks of being the owner.”

Like getting one of your girlfriends a job here—until she turned up pregnant,
I thought.

“But I never heard of this young fellow Webster,” Gallister went on. “I leave all the details of booking the cruises to people who are good at that. I've learned over the years to get good people to handle things and then get out of their way and let them do their jobs. Captain Williams tends to the running of the boat, Logan Rafferty supervises security and the casino, Ted Simmons is in charge of the kitchen…you get the idea.”

I nodded and said, “Captain Williams looks like he would've been right at home in Mark Twain's day, steaming up and down the Mississippi.”

“He certainly does. He's a throwback, in a way. So is Rafferty. He should have been in Las Vegas in the forties and fifties.”

“Mobster, eh?”

Gallister put a finger on the tip of his nose, pushed it to one side, and grinned.

“Well, if you ever need anybody killed…” I said.

“I'll know who to go to!” Gallister finished with a laugh. Suddenly, he looked sober as he realized what we had just said. “Now, wait just a minute. I didn't mean for that to sound like…I mean, what with that murder that happened yesterday…I know that Logan had nothing to do with it. I'm certain of that.”

“Oh, so am I,” I said. “How long has he worked here on the
Southern Belle
?”

“Three years. Ever since I bought the boat and had it restored.”

“So he was here when that murder happened last year.”

I worried that I might be jumping the gun and pushing Gallister too hard, but he seemed talkative at the moment. He was still trying to impress me, I thought, and he might not be that way with a lot of other people around, like at the performance in the salon tonight—if the performance even took place.

Gallister looked at me blankly. “What murder?”

“I don't know all the details,” I said. “I just heard somebody talkin' about it. Some girl who worked as a cocktail waitress in the casino. She was hit on the head and thrown overboard….”

“Oh, yes, that dreadful business. I remember it vaguely. What was her name again?”

I didn't answer. If I had just heard rumors about the case, as I'd told him, then it was likely I wouldn't know Hannah's name.

“Helen?” he went on. “Hester? I remember it was some sort of old-fashioned name…Hannah! That's it. Hannah Kramer. I remember her now.”

You ought to,
I thought.
You were sleeping with her.

“Nice girl. Very attractive, as I recall. It's a real shame about what happened to her.”

“It would have been a shame even if she hadn't been very attractive,” I said.

“Of course, of course. That's not what I meant. When Logan told me about it, I instructed him to cooperate fully with the police.”

“But they never found out who killed her, did they?”

“No, not that I'm aware of.” Gallister made a face again. “I hope the
Southern Belle
doesn't get a reputation as a bad-luck boat because of this new murder. If you and the other tour operators start thinking that she's jinxed, it'll ruin business.”

“Well, you've always got real estate to fall back on,” I said.

“That's right, I do.” He tossed back the rest of his drink. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Delilah?”

“No, that's all,” I said. “I'll see you in the salon at eight, assumin' that Detective Travis lets us in there again?”

“I'll be there,” he promised. He held out a hand. I took it, and for a second I thought he was going to kiss the back of my hand. He settled for shaking it, though, and he didn't hold on for more than a few seconds longer than he had to. I saw a distracted look in his eyes, and I had to wonder if it was there because I had brought up Hannah's murder. He had to be worried that Webster's murder would draw attention to that year-old, unsolved case.

He put a hand lightly on my arm as we went to the door of the suite. He opened it and ushered me into the anteroom. “Good-bye until later, Delilah,” he said. “Remember, you're always welcome on the
Southern Belle
.”

“Thanks. I hope to be bringin' plenty of tours on this cruise in the future.”

He closed the door of his suite, and I opened the door leading from the anteroom to the deck. I stepped out and nearly ran smack-dab into a mountain.

A mountain named Logan Rafferty.

I
f I had run into him, I figure I would have bounced right off that broad chest of his. As it was, I came to a stop just inches from him, and I was immediately uncomfortable at having our personal spaces jammed together like that. I took a step back into the anteroom.

“Ms. Dickinson,” Rafferty said. “How are you?”

“Fine, I reckon,” I said. I didn't want to stand around making small talk with Rafferty. I wanted to get back to Mark's cabin.

“No offense, but what are you doing here?” he asked. “This area is off limits to passengers.” Before I could answer, he went on, “Ah, yes, I remember. You don't consider yourself a regular passenger.”

“I was just talking to Mr. Gallister,” I said.

“About…?”

I frowned. “Well, no offense to you, either, Mr. Rafferty, but I don't reckon that's any of your business.”

“Everything that happens on this boat is my business, Ms. Dickinson,” he said, his voice little more than a silky, dangerous whisper. “As a matter of fact, I was looking for you.”

“Me?” I said. “What for?”

“There's something I'd like to show you, down below decks where Ben Webster's body was found.”

That surprised me. I figured that the police had already found everything there was to be found at the crime scene, and I assumed that as a crime scene, it was still off limits. But that storage locker was near the engine room, I recalled, and the engine room personnel used the equipment in it from time to time, so it made sense that the police would try to make it accessible to the crew again as soon as possible.

On the other hand, the
Southern Belle
wasn't actually
going
anywhere until the cops gave the okay, so the main engines weren't running, only the generators that provided power for the lights, air-conditioning, etc.

“If you found something that might be important to the case,” I said to Rafferty, “you need to show it to Detective Travis, not to me.”

Rafferty shook his head. “She's not on board right now. She finished questioning everybody and left a little while ago.”

“But we're still not free to go?” Maybe Gallister's attorneys had been successful at last, and Gallister just didn't know about it.

“Not yet,” Rafferty said with a disgusted look. “Anyway, we wouldn't start back to St. Louis tonight, even if the cops said it was okay.”

I looked past him, which wasn't easy since he filled up nearly all the doorway between the anteroom and the deck. The rosy light was fading in the sky, which told me the sun had set. It was later than I had thought.

“Whatever you found, I'm sure you could call Detective Travis—” I began.

Rafferty stopped me with an emphatic shake of his head. “No, not until I'm sure what I've got is really important. That's why I want you to have a look at it.”

“Me? What do I have to do with it, whatever
it
is?”

“Webster was a member of your tour group.”

“Which doesn't mean a blasted thing. I never met him before yesterday.”

Rafferty leaned closer to me. I didn't like it, but there wasn't really anyplace I could retreat.

“If I'm right about what I suspect,” he said, “then Webster wasn't really who he said he was.”

That surprised me, too. I already knew that “Ben Webster” had been a phony identity, but how had Rafferty found out about that?

Maybe the same way Melissa had, I thought. Maybe he had searched around enough on the Internet to stumble over Webster's deception.

But it was the phony billing address on the credit card that had tipped Melissa off in the first place, and Rafferty wouldn't have had that information, I reminded myself. Whatever Rafferty had uncovered, it was something new.

“All right,” I said. “I'll take a look at it.”

He smiled. “Good. Come with me.”

Go below decks alone with a man whom Charles Gallister had just likened to a Vegas gangster, a man I strongly suspected might have had something to do with at least one murder and maybe two? I wasn't born yesterday. I smiled at Rafferty and said, “Fine, but let's get the captain to go down there with us.”

Rafferty shook his head. “I don't want to bother the captain with this. Let's figure out first if it really means anything.”

“Sorry,” I told him. “I'm not goin' anywhere with you unless somebody comes with us.” I started to turn back toward the door of the suite. “I'll see if Mr. Gallister would like to be part of this.”

“You've talked to Gallister enough,” Rafferty said.

The tone of his voice warned me, but I didn't have time to react. As he spoke, his hand came down hard on my left shoulder. I tried to twist away and opened my mouth to yell, but before any sound could emerge, his other hand clamped over the whole lower half of my face. He jerked me back against him, which was sort of like being jerked against a brick wall.

“You've stirred up enough trouble,” he rasped into my ear as he put his head close to mine. “You and your damn partner are gonna be sorry you came after me.”

Partner?
What in the world was he talking about? I didn't have a partner on this boat, in the business sense or any other.

I didn't really spend a lot of time pondering that, though, because I was too busy panicking and fighting, trying to get away from him. I twisted and writhed, stomped on his feet, kicked back at his shins, tried to elbow him in the stomach. None of it did a bit of good. I couldn't get away, couldn't yell, couldn't even bite Rafferty's hand, because he was holding me too tightly. I lifted a leg and tried to kick Gallister's door, but Rafferty pulled me away so that the kick fell short.

My heart pounded so wildly in my chest it felt like it was about to burst right through my skin. I knew now that the initial dislike and distrust I'd felt toward Rafferty were justified. So was the outright suspicion that he was a killer. I felt his murderous intent in his big, strong hands as he backed onto the deck and dragged me with him.

He paused when he was just outside the door. I felt his chin brush the back of my hair as he quickly turned his head from one side to the other and then back. Checking to see if the coast was clear, I thought. He didn't want anybody to see him dragging me to wherever he planned to take me.

Wherever he planned to get rid of me.

If I had cooperated and gone with him without raising a fuss, I'm sure he would have taken me to some isolated spot below decks and then broken my neck, too. As it was, I didn't think he would try to negotiate several flights of stairs and a couple of decks with a struggling woman. So I wasn't all that surprised when he hauled me toward the stairs leading up to the pilothouse. Shocked in one way, maybe, but not really surprised. He craned his neck to look over the railing along the edge of the deck, checking below to see if anyone was watching, then started dragging me up the stairs.

I was scared, mad, and determined, all at the same time, but even though I kept fighting I was no match for Rafferty's strength and brutality. I winced in pain as his hands tightened even more. I got both feet planted against one of the steps above him and shoved with them as hard as I could, hoping that would force him to topple over backward, but he didn't budge. I knew I might be hurt if we both fell down the stairs, but that seemed less dangerous than letting him take me wherever he wanted.

There was no “wherever” about it, I realized. There could be only one destination.

The pilothouse.

We reached the top of the stairs. Rafferty obviously didn't want to let go of me with either hand, so he kicked the door, just like I'd tried to kick Gallister's door. This one opened a second later, and Captain L. B. Williams looked out with a puzzled expression on his face that turned into one of pure shock when he recognized me and Rafferty.

“What the hell—” he began.

“Get out of the way,” Rafferty growled.

Williams stepped back, and Rafferty all but threw me into the pilothouse. He came in fast right behind me, heeling the door closed as he did so, and put both hands on my shoulders to force me down into a chair.

“What are you doing?” Williams demanded.

“Cleaning up a mess,” Rafferty snapped.

Then he did something I didn't really expect, even though I knew how much danger I was in.

He drew back a fist and punched me in the face.

I went out like the proverbial light.

 

Funny thing about being knocked out. It's not at all like being asleep. You don't dream. There's no sense of time passing. It's just nothing. It's not even blackness, because that implies the possibility of something other than blackness.

The moments when you're regaining consciousness are the only ones that even remotely resemble sleep. You begin to be aware of things, but only vaguely, like when you start to come out of a deep, almost drugged slumber. Gradually you figure out that you're lying down and you can't see anything because your eyes are closed. You hear distorted noises that make no sense. You feel the surface underneath you—a nice, soft bed if you're lucky.

The hard wooden floor of a riverboat pilothouse if you're not.

The harsh noises that filtered into my ears slowly became voices. The part of my brain that was beginning to function again recognized them after a while. They belonged to Logan Rafferty and Captain Williams. And the captain, bless his heart, was saying, “…won't allow you to kill her.”

“You don't have any choice in the matter,” Rafferty told him. “She's a danger to us.”

“And having yet another dead body show up won't endanger us?” Williams asked.

It was a logical question, I thought. I knew they were talking about me, but at that point I wasn't quite able to grasp that my continued survival depended on what they were saying. My brain hadn't come that far back yet.

“Look, I overheard Gallister talking to his lawyers. He said something about a PI. It's got to be this Dickinson broad. She's been poking around and asking questions practically ever since she came on board. Then I caught her coming out of Gallister's suite. She's got to be working for him.”

“Did it ever occur to you that she's really a travel agent and was just concerned because one of her clients had been killed?”

“Webster?” Rafferty snorted. “I'll bet he was a PI, too. They were probably working together.”

He was way off on that, I thought. Or was he? Since “Ben Webster” was a phony identity, maybe the dead man, whatever his name really was, had been working undercover, too, just like Mark. And, for that matter, Vince Mallory.

One thing I've learned running tours is that if you take any group of people, anywhere, among them will be plenty of secrets, most of which the folks who hold them don't want revealed. Most of those secrets aren't that important to the world at large. Chances are, anybody who found out about them wouldn't really care. Certainly some secrets are more shameful than others. Occasionally somebody might actually get into trouble with the law if the things that person was hiding were brought out into the open. Mostly, though, the secrets that people hide are harmless.

Boy, that wasn't true on this cruise. False identities, private detectives working undercover, mistresses, murders, crooked gambling…Obviously, what went on aboard the
Southern Belle
wasn't nearly as genteel as the boat's name might lead you to expect.

But Rafferty was sure wrong about one thing: I wasn't a private eye. I didn't think Webster had been, either, but I didn't know for sure about that.

“Did you find anything on her computer?” Williams asked.

“Just travel agency stuff. It's a good cover. I'll bet there are some hidden files on there somewhere, though. I'll keep looking.”

So Rafferty was the one who had taken my computer! The ransacking of my cabin hadn't been a simple burglary after all. He'd been looking for proof that I was a private detective, possibly working with Ben Webster.

I might have laughed if I hadn't wanted them to think I was still unconscious. Rafferty and Williams were worried that a private eye might be on the boat looking into their activities. They had no idea that Mark Lansing really was a PI, but the case that had brought him here had nothing to do with the rigged gambling going on in the casino. Rafferty had suspected me before Gallister ever came aboard and said something that Rafferty had overheard and taken as confirmation of his suspicions. In truth, Gallister had been talking about Mark, but Rafferty had no way of knowing that. He had just jumped to the conclusion that he'd been right about me all along.

If my head hadn't hurt already from being punched, it probably would have ached from trying to follow all the crazy thoughts whirling around in my head. Too many murders, too many motives…

“You always jump the gun,” Williams complained with a note of bitter resentment in his voice. “If you hadn't panicked when that Kramer girl figured out what Garvey was doing—”

“If I hadn't taken care of her, she would have told Gallister. Who do you think he would have believed? Us or her?”

“Her, I suppose,” Williams said. “He was sleeping with her, after all.” He sighed. “Still, you didn't have to kill her. You didn't have to kill that young man yesterday.”

“I didn't,” Rafferty snapped. “I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Webster.”

“What?” I heard the surprise in Williams's voice. “I just assumed—”

“Well, you were wrong.”

I bit back a groan. Not only did I hurt, but the revelations were coming fast and furious now. Rafferty had just admitted killing Hannah Kramer. Not to protect his boss, Gallister, though. From the sound of it, Gallister hadn't known anything about Hannah's death. He might be guilty of a lot of things, but evidently murder wasn't one of them.